Palmolive unit fetches highest resale price this year

(Crain’s) — A buyer forked over $5.25 million for a unit in the historic Palmolive Building on North Michigan Avenue, the highest price paid this year in the Chicago condominium resale market.

The hefty price for the 25th-floor unit of the Palmolive, 919 N. Michigan Ave., surpasses the $4.75 million paid in February on the resale of a unit at the Residences at 900 North Michigan, according to the Chicago Assn. of Realtors, which analyzed numbers from Midwest Real Estate Data LLC.

The buyer of the Palmolive unit could not be identified. Real estate agent Marilyn Lissner of Chicago-based Prudential Rubloff Properties, who represented the buyer, declines to comment.

The seller was a trust controlled by James Otterbeck, chairman and CEO of OnePoint Patient Care LLC, a Morton Grove-based hospice pharmacy services provider, according to property records and sources familiar with the transaction. He declines to comment.

While the high-end market is slowly crawling back to life, sellers are still having a tough time. To close a deal, they must be willing to slash their asking prices to battle lower-priced alternatives in financial distress, such as bank-owned properties and short sales, in which lenders agree to accept less than the debt.

“So many buyers these days are in love with the deal, not the unit,” says Gail Spreen, president of Chicago-based residential brokerage Streeterville Properties, who wasn’t involved in the Palmolive transaction. “If they don’t get a good enough price, they’ll buy something else.”

The deal, which closed Oct. 20, illustrates the meager price appreciation of high-end condos in recent years.

The $5.25-million price was just 8% more than the $4.88 million the Otterbeck trust paid in July 2006 for the 5,400-square-foot unit, which has three bedrooms, two fireplaces and a walnut-paneled library.

The full-floor unit was put on the market in January for $6.25 million. In April, the asking price was lowered to $5.79 million.

Several brand-new condos have sold in 2010 for more than the Palmolive condo. In the biggest transaction this year, a buyer paid $8.18 million in March for a unit at Elysian Hotel & Private Residences, 11 E. Walton St.

Chicago-based Draper & Kramer Inc. started converting the upper floors of the 37-story Palmolive into 99 condos in 2001. The residences have a separate entrance at 159 E. Walton St.

The Art Deco high-rise, built in the late 1920s, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.